• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.150-150
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• 2010

Carbon nanotubes have drawn attention as one of the most promising emitter materials ever known not only due to their nanometer-scale radius of curvature at tip and extremely high aspect ratios but also due to their strong mechanical strength, excellent thermal conductivity, good chemical stability, etc. Some applications of CNTs as emitters, such as X-ray tubes and microwave amplifiers, require high current emission over a small emitter area. The field emission for high current density often damages CNT emitters by Joule heating, field evaporation, or electrostatic interaction. In order to endure the high current density emission, CNT emitters should be optimally fabricated in terms of material properties and morphological aspects: highly crystalline CNT materials, low gas emission during electron emission in vacuum, optimal emitter distribution density, optimal aspect ratio of emitters, uniform emitter height, strong emitter adhesion onto a substrate, etc. We attempted a novel approach to fabricate CNT emitters to meet some of requirements described above, including highly crystalline CNT materials, low gas emission, and strong emitter adhesion. In this study, CNT emitters were fabricated by filtrating an aqueous suspension of highly crystalline thin multiwalled CNTs (Hanwha Nanotech Inc.) through a metal mesh. The metal mesh served as a support and fixture frame of CNT emitters. When 5 ml of the CNT suspension was engaged in filtration through a 400 mesh, the CNT layers were formed to be as thick as the mesh at the mesh openings. The CNT emitter sample of $1{\times}1\;cm^2$ in size was characteristic of the turn-on electrical field of 2.7 V/${\mu}m$ and the current density of 14.5 mA at 5.8 V/${\mu}m$ without noticeable deterioration of emitters. This study seems to provide a novel fabrication route to simply produce small-size CNT emitters for high current emission with reliability.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.367-372
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• 2006

A carbon nanotube field emission display(CNT FED) panel with a 2 inch diagonal size was fabricated using a screen printing of a prepared photo-sensitive CNT paste and vacuum in-line sealing technology. After a surface treatment of the patterned CNT, only the carbon nanotube tips are uniformly exposed on the surface. The diameter of the exposed CNTs are usually about 20 nm. Using the photo-sensitive CNT paste, we have developed a triode type CNT FEA with a self-aligned gate-emitter structure. The turn on voltage was around 100 V which corresponds to according the turn on field of about $40V/{\mu}m$. By the creation of a self-aligned gate-emitter structure, it is expected that the screen printed photo-sensitive CNT paste is promising as a good candidate for the large size field emission display.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.08a
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• pp.937-939
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• 2007

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have used as an electron field emitter of the field emission display (FED) due to their characteristics of high-electron emission, rapid response and low power consumption. However, to commercialize the FED with CNT emitter, some fundamental problems regarding life time and emission efficiency have to be solved. In this study, we investigated the $TiO_2$ coated CNT as a field emitter. $TiO_2$ nanoparticles can coated on CNT surface by chemical solution method. $TiO_2$ nanoparticles had uniform size with the average size of about 2.4 nm to 3.1 nm. Field emission performance of CNT coated with $TiO_2$ nanoparticles was evaluated and discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.468-468
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• 2011

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been considered as one of the promising candidate for next-generation field emitters because of their unique properties, such as high field enhancement factor, good mechanical strength, and excellent chemical stability. So far, a lot of researchers have been interested in field emission properties of CNT itself. However, it is necessary to study proper field emitter shapes, as well as the fundamental properties of CNTs, to apply CNTs to real devices. For example, specific applications, such as x-ray sources, e-beam sources, and microwave amplifiers, need to get a focused electron beam from the field emitters. If we use planar-typed CNT emitters, it will need several focal lenses to reduce a size of electron beam. On the other hand, the point-typed CNT emitters can be an effective way to get a focused electron beam using a simple technique. Here, we introduce a fabrication of CNT fibers with nanoscale point tips which can be used as a point-typed emitter. The emitter made by the CNT fibers showed very low turn-on electric field, high current density, and large enhancement factor. In addition, it showed stable emission current during long operation period. The high performance of CNT point emitter indicated the potential e-beam source candidate for the applications requiring small electron beam size.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.1198-1201
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• 2006

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have used as an electron field emitter of the field emission display (FED) due to their characteristics of high-electron emission, rapid response and low power consumption. However, to commercialize the FED with CNT emitter, some fundamental problems regarding life time and emission efficiency have to be solved. In this study, we investigated the metal coated CNT as a field emitter on which metal nanoparticles were coated by chemical modification. Metal nanoparticles, such as Ru, Pd, were synthesized by solution reduction method. The size of the metal nanoparticle has the range of 2 - 5 nm. Surface was modified chemically with the use of ionic surfactant which changed the surface charge of nanoparticles.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2004.03a
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• pp.300-305
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• 2004

A preliminary study on. field emitter array cathodes was conducted aiming at applying for electrodymanic tether (EDT) propulsion systems. The EDT propulsion systems are assumed to use for active removal systems of post-mission spacecraft, which would otherwise become space debris. A survey on field emit-ter array cathode technology was conducted, and it showed that carbon nanotube (CNT) emitters are suit-able to EDT application. Trial fabrications and evaluation tests of CNT emitters were conducted, which demonstrated a target emission current density of 10 ㎃/$\textrm{cm}^2$. It was found out that the most important technical issue for developing CNT emitters is to improve the performance against voltage breakdown between the emitter and the opposite electrode.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.61 no.7
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• pp.1001-1006
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• 2012

This paper presents a carbon nanotube (CNT) triode-structure field emitter as an ion source in a micro time-of-flight mass spectrometer(TOF-MS). In the ion source by field emission, the electrons emitted from cathodes under an electric field accelerated to the anode and ionize gas molecules by impact before arriving the anode. The generated positive ions are to be accelerated to the ion collector. Whereas most of ions are drawn to the cathodes in diode field emitters, a grid in the triode field emitter prevents the ions from being drawn to the cathodes. The triode field emitter is fabricated by micromachining. The cathode is composed of six CNT cylinders. The total size of the fabricated device is $8.0{\times}7.3{\times}1.9mm^3$. The anode and the grid current of the fabricated CNT field emitter were measured for various anode and grid voltages. When the anode and the grid voltages are 1000 V and 990 V, respectively, the emission current passing through the ionization region is 8.6 ${\mu}A$, which is a sufficient emission current for ionization and mass spectrometry.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.466-466
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• 2011

There have been several methods to fabricate carbon nanotube (CNT) emitters, which include as-grown, spraying, screen-printing, electrophoresis and bonding methods. Unfortunately, these techniques generally suffer from two main problems. One is a weak mechanical adhesion between CNTs and the cathode. The as-grown, spraying and electrophoresis methods show a weak mechanical adhesion between CNTs and the cathodes, which induces CNT emitters pulled out under a high electric field. The other is a severe degradation of the CNT tip due to organic binders used in the fabrication process. The screen-printing method which is widely used to fabricate CNT emitters generally shows a critical degradation of CNT emitters caused by the organic binder. Such kinds of problems induce a short lifetime of the CNT field emitters which may limit their practical applications. Therefore, a robust CNT emitter which has the strong mechanical adhesion and no degradation is still a great challenge. Here, we introduce a simple and effective technique for fabrication of CNT field emitter, namely filtration-taping-transfer method. The CNT emitters fabricated by the filtration-taping-transfer method show the low turn-on electric fields, the high emission current, good uniformity and good stability. The enhanced emission performance of the CNT emitters is mainly attributed to high emission sites on the emitter area, and to good ohmic contact and strong mechanical adhesion between the emitters and cathodes. The CNT emitters using a simple and effective fabrication method can be applied for various field emission applications such as field emission displays, lamps, e-beam sources, and x-ray sources. The detail fabrication process will be covered at the poster.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.550-556
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• 2006

Photosensitive carbon nanotube (CNT) pastes are explored to develop a CNT field emitter for field emission display (FED) application. We formulated a photosensitive paste including multi-walled CNTs (MWNTs) for screen printing. The photosensitive CNT paste was synthesized by mixing of MWNTs, inorganic fillers (nano metal), organic vehicle, monomers and photo initiator. The CNT paste films were patterned by using backside exposure technique. The CNTs were strongly fixed on a cathode by formation of carbon residue during firing process. For the CNT emitters, current-voltage(I-V) characteristics and images of field emission were evaluated. The emission properties of CNT emitters are dependent on the paste composition. A turn-on electric field for the CNT field emitters is measured to be 1 V/$\mu$m. Additionally, the effect of heat treatment parameter on field emission properties was discussed. The newly formulated photosensitive CNT paste can be potentially applicable to highly reliable CNT field emitters.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.31-37
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• 2009

Hybrid ballast for field emission lamp with CNT (carbon nano tube) emitter is proposed. Hybrid ballast consists of a high voltage dc part and hi-polar pulse generation part. Field emission lamp with CNT lamp is composed of three electrodes (anode, gate, and cathode). High voltage dc part is for anode and gate and hi-polar pulse generation part is for gate and cathode in CNT triode respectively. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed topology is good for driving CNT lamp. To protect the lamp and ballast, OCP (Over Current Protection), OVP (Over Voltage Protection), and OTP (Over Temperature Protection) are added and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is good for driving field emission lamp with CNT emitter.